


we’re all in the downpour you carry around

by girljustdied



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2019-10-08 22:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17394761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: out of gas at lover’s leap.





	we’re all in the downpour you carry around

**Author's Note:**

> prompt was “baby we'll run wild, with the scars of this town fading on our backs, and never grow old.”

It’s different this time. The car’s hers, for starters. Filled up with petrol she’d paid for—not by kissing Cook even when his mouth reeked of the stuff from siphoning it from the filthiest cars they passed, but with their own money.

“Empty,” Effy had traced in grimy windows then, feeling clever.

“Clever,” Cook said, and she couldn’t feel it anymore.

Doesn’t matter. She’s at the wheel now, Cook fitfully asleep in the passenger seat, lit cigarette dangling dangerously from the hand in his lap. And this time he’s the one who’d nearly beat a person to death—again. Or so she’s heard. He hadn’t been very talkative when Naomi had handed him off a few weeks after that last night all of them had been in Freddie’s shed.  
  
“I can’t fucking take care of him anymore,” the words had been angry but the girl had looked ashamed, tears spilling but immediately getting wiped away. “Emily—Emily can’t take it. It’s bad enough that Freddie—that’s bad enough, isn’t it?”

Leave it to the girl who’d only come to see her in the hospital to sort out if she was going Effy-mad or the safer, more teenage, more manageable sort to not avoid the subject entirely. The others tiptoed around, afraid that Effy’d come unraveled again. Her father bought her a car. Her mother didn’t force her to choose a university. Tony came home, and stroked her hair, and read her his term papers. Panda spoke about not going to America with eyes unable to hold Effy’s steady gaze. And Cook. Cook hid out at Naomi and Emily’s, still wanted for escaping prison—the rest speculation at best.

Everything was different, see, because Freddie was dead. And everything was the same. Still. Somehow.

The world spins on, winds Effy all up once more.

She didn’t go to the funeral. Neither did Cook, probably.

She’d told her mother that she was taking a road trip with some friends and needed money, then drove off into the night with Cook hidden in the boot until they were kilometers out of Bristol.

Parks in the lot of a hotel almost a day later, decides they’ll stay for the night, and then offers Cook the water bottle she’d lifted from the lobby. He drinks half of it in one gulp before handing it back, wipes at his mouth carelessly with the back of his hand.

“How far out are you gonna me cut me loose?” he says, voice rough with disuse.

She hadn’t thought about it like that.

“Dunno. But I got us a room here for now.”

His eyes flit from hers, and for a split second she thinks he’s gonna go on about how he can make it on his own from here, that she shouldn’t follow. What he actually does say is nearly as nonsensical:

“Gotta stretch my sea legs,” and starts off towards the long expanse of trees at the other end of the lot.

“You can’t. Someone could see you.”

He laughs, and though she expects that sound to feel empty, it doesn’t. “I’m not scared.”

“Promise you’ll come back,” her heartbeat fast in her breast. Fear, she thinks. She’s the one afraid he’ll take off without her. “Room eleven.”

There’s a charge through her when he glances back and nods. She watches his lithe body weave through the trees for a few seconds before just taking off after him instead with long, running strides.

“What the fuck are you thinking?” Katie had demanded just days before while Effy packed up almost every scrap of clothing possible. Then the pill bottles, one by one. “Are you even thinking? Aren’t you afraid he’ll—aren’t you afraid of going mental again? Ems and Naomi almost split up over that wanker; he’ll drag you down with him if he can. ”

Times like that she’d felt as if maybe she and Cook had been the only ones to ever truly know one another.

When he hears her footsteps behind him, he speeds up with a little whoop. Chase is on, race is on, doesn’t matter. It’s just the two of them and the low tree branches and bushes scratching up their skin. Sweat trickling down their spines. Little screams that are more like laughter than anything else bursting out of her chest. Nothing and no one else.

The trees open up to the edge of a steep cliff, and when she sees Cook skid to a halt in front of her she manages to slow down a bit more gracefully. Hands on her thighs, she pants and waits for her pulse to slow. Watches Cook step more carefully to the edge and peer down.

“Whew,” he exhales shakily. “S’far drop.”

It is. Practically takes her breath away when she moves to put her toes to the edge beside his.

“Be careful,” she murmurs as he rocks back and forth on his heels a little.

“Same to you, peachy.”

She tugs a bracelet off her arm and tosses it down to watch it fall. Can’t even hear it hit the rocky ground far below them. It’s more like last spring with Cook than ever, but still—

“Think it’d hurt?” his gaze too inward to mean anything good.

“Nothing hurts when you’re dead,” she answers automatically. Habit.

It’s true, though, so she doesn’t take it back even though he looks struck. Nothing hurts except the people you leave behind—something that’d never truly mattered to her before but now seems critical.

“Eff—”

She grips the side of his shirt with a tight fist, the fabric stretching against her fingers. “C’mon.”

Doesn’t know what she means by that, exactly, but it makes Cook stumble back. Pulls her with him, eyes on her hand in his shirt until she lets go.

They eat candy from a vending machine for supper, holed up in their room at the head and foot of the only bed. She can’t stop looking at how filthy their fingernails are, and gets up without a word to run a bath. Stays in the bathroom until it’s full before moving to stand in the doorway.

“Mmm?” he murmurs at her steady gaze.

“Come here, let’s wash up before bed.”

“You ain’t my fuckin’ mum, princess.” Too much vitriol. He’s nervous.

“Come here, Cook.”

So he does. Watches her tug off her blouse and jeans with glassy eyes, and she lowers herself into tub still in her underwear, water stinging hot on her skin. Cook touches the water near her knee with his middle and index finger before following her example with his clothes. Sits facing her from the other end, arms wrapped tightly around his legs.

“I tried to kill myself,” she says to disturb the stillness.

“I know,” he flicks at the water with one hand. Unfolds slightly to lean forward and briefly dunk his head in the water, his legs touching hers with the movement. “So did I.” She must look surprised, because his mouth slants slightly. “I’m just fuckin’ with ya. Meant to go out in a blaze of glory, ‘course.”

Katie had told her that Cook’d been beaten within an inch of his life when he’d shown up at Naomi’s. Wouldn’t allow himself to be taken to the hospital.

“If I’d done it in a bath, everything might be different.”

“What?”

She dips a fingertip into the water and watches it ripple. “I’d be the one dead one.”

He looks at her as if she’s broken some unspoken agreement. Perhaps she has.

“Fuck you.” He heaves himself out angrily, waves of water splashing over the edge in his wake.

She waits to hear the sound of the front door, but it never comes. Lets the water cover her head and holds her breath for as long as she can.

Thinks about kissing Freddie that first time in the lake. Thinks about his hand steady on her back as he passed the shower spray over her body. Water balloons, vodka slick on his skin, tears glistening in his eyes and I love you, I promise you, I’ll find a way to make it true and then raise it a million millions if only it could quiet everything else like it should—

Her body forces her up out of the water with a whoosh, air flooding in harsh and cold.

Cook’s watching the telly when she pads into the main room with a towel wrapped around her body. He sits on the floor, leaning back against the foot of the bed, and doesn’t spare her a single glance as she searches through her suitcase for a big t-shirt to wear to sleep. Doesn’t drop the towel until she’s got it and a pair of knickers on even though Cook seems determined to ignore her every move.

But when she crawls into bed and shuts the light, he turns off the television. The room turns pitch black, she can’t see a thing.

“Cook?” irrational fear in her, like maybe he’d disappeared. Like maybe he was a figment of her imagination, or that in the dark there could now be something else in the room with them as well.

The bed dips beside her; she closes her eyes and tries to calm her breathing and the nonsense words cluttering up her head.

After almost a half hour—feels like an eternity—Cook’s voice is raspy and clouded with weariness:

“I keep praying I don’t dream about touchin’ you.”

She traces his palm with her fingertips in response, does it until he grasps her hand; half his knuckles still all split open as they close around hers. He can’t stop picking at the scabs.

“Cook? Cook, do you believe in god?” In heaven and hell? Her words a trembling whine as she cries for what she feels like is the first time in her whole bleeding life.

But by then he’s drifted off, breathing loud and even.

“What’s the difference?” he had told her once before, the ground cold beneath them and an infinite amount of stars just as numbing above. “If there’s an eye in the sky it sure as shit isn’t down here in the dirt with us either way, yeah.”

Doesn’t seem right to change your mind about something like that just because your best friend is dead and you want to imagine he’s looking down on you from a better place. She doubts his answer would be any different now, even though she knows hers is: “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m god.”

“All right by me, Eff,” his mouth on her temple.

The memory is strangely calming. She buries her face in the crook of Cook’s neck, his skin soft and scent familiar, and that’s calming as well. Doesn’t realize she’s drifted off until she’s waking up, limbs all tangled up with his.

She kisses his jaw lightly, and he cranes his head to touch his lips to hers in his sleep. Been over a year, and it’s still habit. She opens his mouth with a thumb on his jaw and twists her tongue slow and lazy with his despite the morning breath, Cook’s hands tightening on her as he wakes fully.

It’s him and her. He’d said that once. He’d said that a million million times.

She thinks that’s why he doesn’t stop her from rolling their bodies until she’s on top, why his hands slide up her spine and spread to clutch her biceps possessively. But then he twists, switches their positions and pulls away. Holds her down and breathes heavily, eyes searching hers.

“You ever regret it?” she’s bitter, suddenly wants to pour salt in his wounds.

“What?” he pants.

“Choosing me over him.”

“If you’re looking to fuck, princess, you’re readin’ from the wrong script,” he mutters.

“Then tell me what to do.”

He’s silent for a long moment, jaw tense. For a second she thinks nothing’s going to happen—

“Close your eyes.”

She does, and when he lets her go in response she reaches up and traces the lines of his face. His chin, his lips, his brow. If she was blind, she thinks that she’d know him by touch. By scent. By the feeling of his hips jutting against hers and the sound of his exhale as he leans towards her.

It’s nothing soothing. Never that. Cook. Her skin vibrates at his touch, she’s always trembling and clutching and trying to prove something.

“What do you see?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

He makes a soft sound, like maybe he’s crying. “What do you feel, then?”

Anger, jealousy, bitterness, tiredness, hope, lust, love—

“Everything.”

Everything she’d tried to be above, didn’t want to give up. Things she could pull from others so easily they should mean nothing.

Cook’s kiss this time is fervent and messy and then he’s yanking off her knickers, head tucked into the crook of her neck as he thrusts inside of her, his stubble rough on her skin.

It’s not about pleasure, even if it’s there, winding her body tight, waiting.

“I don’t—” he sobs into her skin.

She cradles the back of his head with both hands. “Shhh—”

He’d do it all again. That’s what he’d told her. And again and again and again. Love. Crazy. He’s fucking crazy. He’s the one—

She comes apart just moments before he does, her voice hoarse as she cries out. He slumps off her immediately and onto his back. After their breathing calms down—after her thighs stop shaking and her heart stops skittering in her chest—it’s almost like it never happened.

“Cook?” she whispers, thankful for the thick curtains in the window that keep the small room relatively dark.

“Mmm?”

“Close your eyes.”

They’re both asleep again not long after.

When he’s gone when she wakes up reaching for him, it’s a blow—a genuine shock. She tugs on the first things she grabs from her suitcase and leaves the room without even bothering to check the toilet. Goes immediately to that cliff behind the trees instead, not even looking for him. Dark things clouding up her mind.

But Cook’s already there, of course, his bare feet curving over the edge.

“Don’t come any closer,” he tells her.

He’d tried to off himself, he’d told her. And with just one day she’d drawn it out again. Or he’d drawn it out of her. Or they’d both just been waiting for the other.

Hardly matters. Same thing.

“Okay,” she answers carefully, but still steps towards the edge. When he glances back over his shoulder, she doesn’t bother to stop moving.

“You’ll tell Naoms, yeah? You’ll tell her.”

“Tell her what?” she asks the question she even though she knows the answer.

“That I’m sorry. And my brother as well.”

“Tell them yourself,” she mutters. “Maybe you should write a note.”

He laughs bitterly. “A note, right, right. Forgot.”

“Right.” By now she’s almost at the edge with him. “What would you say?”

He shakes his head as if to clear it. “Don’t matter.”

“I wouldn’t say anything. Used to go months without speaking, anyone ever tell you that?”

“’Cause you don’t ever have fuck all to say,” he says calmly—and it’s not an attack, not really.

She reaches out and takes his hand in hers, twines their fingers together and puts her feet on the edge as well.

“You ready?” she prods. “I was born ready.”

Ready to go. Waiting to go, monsters always at her heels, clawing up her back.

“Where would we of gone,” he swallows, “after this town?”

“Nowhere. I knew it’d end here. I wanted it to end. Didn’t you?”

It’s true. It could be true. Just couldn’t leave each other behind.

His eyes are like a child’s. He doesn’t believe his own words: “You’re bluffing.”

She grips his hand tight, focuses on the ground over the cliff, so much further down than she remembers. Can tell by the shift in Cook’s body that he does the same.

“Italy’s beautiful this time of year,” tears suddenly spilling unbidden down her cheeks. The wind pushes them back for her. “If we could get onto a boat, get smuggled in.”

“Never learned Italian. How ‘bout Spain?”

“Sounds really lovely.”

“Live by the water,” he muses, his hold on her hand bordering on painful. “Freds’d like that.”

“Cook?” his name pops out of her chest when she senses him tensing his body to jump. She supposes she’d lied when she’d said that she wouldn’t say anything.

He nods, the small smile curling on his mouth soft but troubled. No, resolute. Ready.

“I love you,” she says.

That’s when she jumps.  
  
That’s when he should, too. But he doesn’t. Doesn’t let go of her hand, either, and pulls her up rather easily despite how much she struggles. Pins her down to the ground.

“No, Cook! No, we—”

This was supposed to be it. The end of the line. She couldn't take anymore, couldn't, can't breathe. She bucks up underneath him like a fish out of water.

Love, love, love, she wants to tell him, it's not good for anything. Why bother?

“Eff, stop, s'all right, I'm here. You're here.” His raw, raspy voice turns searching, “Say it—say it again.”

He presses her hair back from her face. Everything gets quiet, and still.  
  
Finally.

“You heard me.” And then at his answering grin: “Let’s just get the fuck out of here, all right? Get as far as we can.”

They use one another as leverage to stand.


End file.
